


Sandcastles and Paintings

by imimmortalagain



Series: They Were Each Others Universe [1]
Category: Doctor Who (2005)
Genre: Angst, Angst with a Happy Ending, Dealing With Trauma, Depression, Eventual Happy Ending, F/F, Happy Ending, How Do I Tag, Post-Episode: s12e10 The Timeless Children, Psychological Trauma, References to Depression, References to prison, References to suicidal ideation, Sad with a Happy Ending, Trauma, it takes awhile to get to that happy ending folks, learning to cope, working through things
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2020-07-29
Updated: 2020-08-03
Packaged: 2021-03-06 07:21:26
Rating: Mature
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 3
Words: 16,486
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/25599481
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/imimmortalagain/pseuds/imimmortalagain
Summary: "The moment was thick, tense. The words they had died to say for the past year stayed lodged in their throats and they choked on it. Tears and silence spilled out into the air until it was oppressive. The silence wrapped around them and the tears covered them.Arms coiled around shoulders and waists. Heads knocking side by side while each tear fell to the crook of each other’s necks. The embrace was tight. Bone crushing. As if that was the only way to communicate. Break the exoskeleton of their time spent away, time spent in pain, and let their feelings seep through the cracks. Nothing they could ever say would begin to even convey the torment that had coated their lives over the past year."Yaz and the Doctor reunite after the events that took place on Gallifrey and things are different. They don't know what to do or say or how to handle everything that has happened. How should they?
Relationships: Thirteenth Doctor/Yasmin Khan
Series: They Were Each Others Universe [1]
Series URL: https://archiveofourown.org/series/1968499
Comments: 24
Kudos: 60





	1. Chapter 1

**Author's Note:**

> This will be a part of a two part series and while this work isn't explicitly thasmin it's them getting closer, developing a strong relationship, and starting to have feelings for each other. But it isn't not the focus of that work. This is because Chibnall but them through the ringer and I want to be true to the characters and not ignore their effects and trauma of the Timeless Children before putting them in a relationship.
> 
> Having said that, I am really in love with this work, it's my child I have birthed this and taken care of it since June. Part one is completely wrote however not edited. I'll update as soon as I've got an nice chunk edited, which'll take about a week. 
> 
> And a special thanks goes out to the Thasmin Discord Server for their support and constant help. And Dylan (freefallvertigo) who helped me develop this story idea and has been an advent supporter. Y'all mean the world to me.

The moment was thick, tense. The words they had died to say for the past year stayed lodged in their throats and they choked on it. Tears and silence spilled out into the air until it was oppressive. The silence wrapped around them and the tears covered them.

Arms coiled around shoulders and waists. Heads knocking side by side while each tear fell to the crook of each other’s necks. The embrace was tight. Bone crushing. As if that was the only way to communicate. Break the exoskeleton of their time spent away, time spent in pain, and let their feelings seep through the cracks. Nothing they could ever say would begin to even convey the torment that had coated their lives over the past year.

Yaz thought the Doctor dead. Not at first, no, she held onto some baseless, unrealistic hope that the Doctor would come. But days turned to weeks turned to months and there was no sign. And that’s when the frantic mania and desperate hope wore away. And depression had threatened her like a rising tide against a chair on the beach. 

She’d fallen into the repetition of nothing. She’d quit her job and spent her days doing… nothing, probably. She couldn’t remember. She didn’t want to remember. 

The only defined thing of that year was the cold, icy dread of the Doctor’s death. The freezing liquid that filled the hole the Doctor left when she was ripped from Yaz’s life. 

And when the TARDIS appeared in her room. When the Doctor stepped out. When the Doctor’s frail, weak, living body stepped out, Yaz almost didn’t react. Afraid that one movement too much would jolt her awake. Would cause the TARDIS to fade out of existence. It wasn’t until the Doctor had called her name, walked up to her, pulled her in by the waist, until she could smell the tell-tale engine oil on the Doctor’s clothes, melded into her skin, that she knew this wasn’t fake. And she pulled the Doctor close. And closer and closer. And closer.

And the Doctor? The Doctor endured prison. Time left alone in isolation for all her demons to catch up. Time to starve and time to cry and time to scream and time to let everything she had ever run away from inflict what was due and all of it was painted onto her. Her eyes were sunken, cheeks were hollow, her skin discolored. She was so broken and her jagged edges tore through flesh straight to Yaz’s heart.

When she’d finally escaped. Finally broken out. Finally set foot on the TARDIS some internal longing brought her here to Earth, to Sheffield, by instinct to Yaz. She drug her broken body out of the TARDIS and collapsed in front of her. And pulled her close. Arms around her waist and she cried. They cried.

Unable to even begin to convey the emotions of the past year. 

][

Yaz wrapped her fingers around the mug. Steam billowed up from the dark liquid. The smell of the tea, the heat of the mug in her palm helped ground Yaz in this reality, helped to remind her that this was real. That this wasn’t going to disappear if she closed her eyes too long. That she wouldn’t wake up from this to find it a dream. 

Still, her stomach twisted and tightened. She was so nervous that despite the confirmation from her tea that this would all fade to nothing, to her bedroom in Sheffield. But luckily, it hadn’t happened yet.

She walked across the kitchen to the table where the Doctor had already started her own breakfast. Eggs, bacon, toast, waffles, fruit, juice, hash browns, anything she could get her hands on. She took to it like spilled paint to a canvas, bite after bite until she was sure that it wouldn’t run away.

She pulled out her chair and sat down, studying the woman in front of her. The color had returned to her cheeks in the past two weeks but she was still so… meek. Yaz couldn’t help the way tears pricked at the corner of her eyes and her breathing only grew heavier. So she blinked and looked away.

“How’d you sleep?” The Doctor asked, her mouth still full of food.

Yaz raised a quiet eyebrow, still not daring to look over to the woman, “You were there,” She let out a breath before quickly glancing over to the Doctor, “Weren’t you?” Her voice rose, slightly, worry and fear etched into her voice.

“How do y’feel, then?” 

Yaz looked back down to her tea and took a sip, “Fine.”

They slipped into silence. They always slipped into silence and it gripped at Yaz’s chest, at her gut. Hell, she hated it. But it was better than the cold silence of solitude and the Doctor seemed to agree, she never left Yaz’s side, not unless she had to, hardly did maintenance on TARDIS, not if Yaz couldn’t follow. Whatever happened in the year that they didn’t see each other had a large impact on their relationship, Yaz knew this from the moment they had hugged each other.

But there was a difference between knowing something and witnessing it. Living with the Doctor stripped of her usual enthusiasm of flare or spunk, or whatever you wanted to call it hurt. Living with the Doctor while always worried that what she was feeling would fade away to nothing?

She had mourned the Doctor. Grieved her death. Given up on her.

All the while the Doctor was going through hell. That much Yaz had known. Her bones protruded from tightly drawn skin. Her eyes were sunken and she looked so frail. But the Doctor never talked about it. They never talked about anything of substance nor did they want to.

And all Yaz wanted to do was pull her into a hug. Hold her close, wrap her tight, let her know that she was safe now. But she didn’t deserve that, did she? She’d given up on the Doctor. So who was she to now want to help her? 

She bit her lip as the tears started to well again before taking another sip out of her tea.

][

Yaz’s bedroom hadn’t changed in the year and Yaz seemed to miss it, appreciate it. It was calming, relaxing, organized—mostly—it was a true reflection of Yaz and the Doctor found peace in that too. Between that and her innate smell that seemed to calm her, the Doctor’s favorite room was Yaz’s. 

She grew to love it in the two weeks since they were back. 

The chair creaked lightly against the wooden floor as the Doctor slowly settled into it, perfectly opposite where Yaz had curled up underneath the blanket. It was the perfect vantage point to check up on Yaz throughout the night. 

She lifted the book in hand to her lap and slowly opened it to where she had left off from the previous night. 

It was the easiest way to pass the time while Yaz was sleeping. They’d been unable to separate themselves, unable to spend time away from each other as if the other would disappear, the TARDIS fade to nothing, if given the chance.

She spent her night reading, burning through books, while Yaz burnt through dreams. 

Hours passed in that simple fashion, page, look, page, look, page, look, page. The contrast between whatever fantastical epic she was reading—her favorite game had been to point out which creatures she had actually met but she didn’t do that now, whether because Yaz was sleeping or she wasn’t that excited about it anymore, no one could tell—and Yaz’s serene face as she slept through the night was enough to instil even a small sense of peace.

A peace she had missed.

She finished off the last page of the book and closed it with a thoughtful smile before looking back up to find Yaz’s face twisted and creased in pain. She was twitching and murmuring. And crying. 

“No, no, no.” She was still sleeping.

The book smacked against the floor and the Doctor made it to her in one step, kneeling down next to Yaz’s bed. Her hand rested on one shoulder and gently shook the woman. More tears spilled past Yaz’s eyes and the Doctor shook her again, “Yaz, Yaz?”

It was enough that time. 

Yaz startled awake, gasping and jumping up, “Doctor?” Her voice was groggy and broken and her eyes were still wet.

The Doctor sighed and cupped Yaz’s cheek, shaky smile covering her face. She wiped away a tear with the pad of her thumb. “It’s okay, Yaz. I’m here. It was just a nightmare. It wasn’t real, I’m real, I’ve got you.” 

The worry washed away from her face, features softening, but the pain still pooled in her eyes. She let out an unsteady breath, trying to keep the tears from falling again.

The Doctor wiped away another tear before nodding over her shoulder to her chair, “I’ll be right over there, okay?”

Yaz’s hand shot forward and gripped onto the Doctor’s forearm, “Stay. Please.”

“Yaz?”

“Stay here, right here.”

She rubbed the back of her neck and sighed. She shot Yaz another, hopefully, reassuring smile “Okay.” She pulled off her coat and yanked off her boots. She took off her suspenders and undid the button and zipper of her culottes, letting them fall to the pile on the floor.

She moved back to the bed and slowly shifted onto the bed, careful not to move too fast and disturb Yaz’s tired state too much. Before long she nestled under the blankets as she scooted forward until her arms could wrap around Yaz’s form. It was still tense. “I’m ‘ere, I got you.” She pulled Yaz tighter until she could nestle her head into the crook of Yaz’s neck.

Yaz found sleep quickly after that. Peaceful sleep full of peaceful dreams. Dreams filled with sandcastles and art and other inconsequential things.

][

She stirred from her sleep calmly, slowly. A wake up she hadn’t really been afforded in the longest time. It probably had to do with the lack of nightmares after the Doctor had shared the bed with her. She yawned and stretched.

The Doctor.

She knew before she’d even opened her eyes that the other side of the bed would be empty, the ghost of eat lingered around her body and from where the Doctor slept but it was already getting cold. 

When her eyes slowly eased open, rubbing them quickly to make sure she had clear vision, they landed on an empty bed.

Her gut twisted, tying itself in knots, the corners of her eyes pricked and stung and then the world was drowned in salt and tears, bed and room blurring.

She took to her feet, pushing the duvet away and letting the cool wooden floor demand attention. 

_ The floor was cold. The floor was cold. The floor was cold. The Doctor wasn’t here _ .

Yaz bit her lip and wiped away the tears. She was still in the TARDIS. 

_ This is the TARDIS. This is the TARDIS. This is the TARDIS. This is the TARDIS. This is the TARDIS. _

She let those four words surround her. Let it flush out her worry. It soothed her screaming heart and turned the gears until her chest untightened. She was still in the TARDIS.

But the Doctor hadn’t been there when she woke up.

She inhaled, breath barely steady, as she made her way out of the room. Her feet padded a soft trail to the console room, her hope so high that if it fell it would surely break. The Doctor needed to be here. The Doctor would be here.

She walked through the doorway into the large control room. It felt empty, different at least, to not see the Doctor galavanting about the control room or working on the control panel while wearing those goggles of hers. 

But it wasn’t truly empty. Yaz found the Doctor sitting against one of the columns while holding her knees to her chest. Her head hung down and she didn’t move upon hearing Yaz’s footsteps. 

“Doctor?” Yaz crossed the room, careful to move slowly and deliberately, never wanting to let her body move in an unscripted way. She needed to be careful with the Doctor. 

She’d crossed the room and was by the Doctor when she knelt down beside her.

The Doctor still hadn’t moved, refusing to acknowledge Yaz’s existence. Yaz doubted that it was intentional, doubted the Doctor was fully aware of where she was right now. 

“Doctor,” She held out her hand and lightly placed it on the Doctor’s shoulders, hoping to give her something to hone in on. “It’s me, it’s Yaz. You’re okay. You’re in the TARDIS. You’re safe, with me.” Yaz’s eyes welled up, filled with tears and in some painful way it made the TARDIS’ air colder, sharper. She wiped them away with her free hand when the Doctor reached out for it. Her calloused fingers wrapped around Yaz’s and Yaz turned her palm up to the Doctor’s. Their fingers laced together and the Doctor gave a light grateful squeeze.

Yaz rubbed soothing circles into the Doctor’s shoulders. “What happened?” Her voice was so soft around the edges, careful and soft, and almost a whisper. It was best to stray away from loud noises.

“It’s nothin’.” 

“No, it’s not,” Yaz sighed, closing her eyes and letting her head fall back to the amber column, “You don’t have to talk about it, okay? Jus’ don’t lie to me, Doctor. You don’t have to hold yourself together right now, okay? It’s okay to let go of this mask you force on around other people, it’s okay to let people in and let people help.” Yaz gave the Doctor’s hand another squeeze, “I want to help in any way that you need it, understand?”

The Doctor nodded.

Yaz smiled a small, tight lipped, smile at her before turning back to the Doctor, “Maybe we should get out of the TARDIS, go on a vacation or somethin’?”

The Doctor looked up at that.

“Get a breath of fresh air?”

The Doctor sat in thought pondering over what Yaz had just said. After a minute her apprehension melted to agreement. “Yeah.”

][

The beach was perfect, not hot enough to be oppressive nor breezy enough to elicit goosebumps. Warm enough to be comfortable. 

Yaz laid atop a beach towel, feet in the sand. She wriggled her toes and sighed. She had wanted to go swimming but she wouldn’t tread further than where the waves lapped onto shore and then receded without the Doctor. And the Doctor hadn’t really wanted to swim. She hadn’t been keen to do any of the things that she had used to find fun, they didn’t watch movies, do karaoke, swim in the TARDIS, or anything like that. Those things were put on pause when they’d gotten back.

Yaz had suggested a movie but the Doctor wasn’t enthusiastic as she used to be and it fell to the wayside. The Doctor forgot and Yaz let her. The movie wouldn’t have been the same anyway, not without the Doctor’s usual commentary. And Yaz didn’t want another living reminder of the way things had drastically changed between them. 

But she was able to get her to the beach, so that must’ve been worth something. It was a good idea. Nerve imbued, of course, the TARDIS had been a constant reminder of where she was. But walking on some alien planet, on some alien beach, with pink tinted sand and blue hinted grey water of their sea, was enough confirmation. Enough to solidify this in reality. 

They’d stay there for two days and one night, having rented a cozy beach house near the shore. The Doctor had wanted to spend more time inside, reading probably, or just her typical desire for lack of entertainment. But Yaz had wanted to go to the beach, to swim. So they met in the middle, relaxing on the sand. 

The Doctor had taken to drawing in the sand with a small twig the high tide had left. 

A few minutes in the sun had turned to half an hour by the time Yaz was dying for the sea. She pushed herself up until she was reclining against her hands and turned over to the Doctor. She wore a tee-shirt and swimming trunks decorated with flamingos. She picked it out herself and Yaz supposed it was a good sign, her tackiness shining through in her choices even if she was more calm now. 

“You want to go for a swim?” Yaz nodded off towards the sea. 

The Doctor looked up from the horizon to her before darting her gaze back towards the sea. She turned back to Yaz with a small sigh, “Yeah, but I’ll need more sunscreen. And y’do too, if y’wanna be safe.” 

The application process was quiet. Energized and tense with… Yaz wasn’t sure. The Doctor may have looked frail but she had muscles which flexed underneath Yaz’s hands and she couldn’t explain why she was so transfixed by it. At the same time the Doctor also took longer than seemed necessary to apply sunscreen, hesitant as she went, while holding her breath.

By the end they were both more quiet than they were before. Or maybe Yaz was imagining it. 

They walked to the water, their footprints turning from soft to defined the closer they got to the edge of the tide. Soon enough they were sitting waist deep and moving with the waves.

“This’ nice.”

“Yeah?” Yaz looked over to the Doctor. 

“Yeah.”

“Good. I love to swim, haven’t had a chance to go in a while though, it is nice.” She sighed and stretched out under the pale blue covering.

“I can enjoy a good swim, I guess, not my all time fav’ thing to do.” 

“Says the one with, how many swimming pools?” Yaz tries a smile.

“Hmh,” The Doctor’s tightlipped smile and breathy laugh were nice, were a first. Talking was also a first. They’d barely had small talk in the two weeks they’d been here. “Those aren’t for me.” The waves seemed to wash away her hard exterior. In their wake they left some raised surface. Another layer, Yaz supposed, but this was nice. Seeing the Doctor smile.

“I seem to recall a few times you’ve joined when Ryan, Graham, and I went swimming.”

“Swimming’s not bad when it’s with people you care about,” The Doctor said, “The way I see it, when you’re as old as I am the small things aren’t fun on your own. Neither are the big things, I ’spose. It’s the company that matters, it’s the company that gives life meaning and enjoyment. Regardless of how small the company is or how much the people who make up the company change over the years. Never get hung up on somethin’ like that, new people bring new perceptions ‘n new fun.”

“Guess it’s a good thing you got me, then, hmm?” Yaz smiled at her.

The Doctor smiled back, it wasn’t tightlipped or forced or anything other than grateful, happy, “Yeah.” 

In the next thirty minutes the water had been able to erode more of the Doctor’s jagged edges that self preservation left. By then she was floating about in the water leisurely while very un-leisurely rambling on about seashells and how they could be found on every planet with a beach.

She had that happy gleam in her eye, even if it was faint, that shined when she got excited about something. And Yaz missed that look, even if what she saw now was only a portion of what she used to know she enjoyed what she could see. 

“D’you want one?” The Doctor finished her ramble with that. Yaz smiled and nodded. And the Doctor returned the smile. “Be back in a mo’.” She kicked off the sandy floor so that she could dive beneath the waves. Slowly her form faded to an outline which faded to nothing beneath the vaguely opaque waves. 

Yaz tried to keep an eye on where she thought she would see the Doctor reappear but she never did. 

And those seconds turned to minutes with not even a tap on the leg. Her chest constricted until breathing was too arduous to do properly and the world faded beneath the glaze of unfallen tears. “Doctor?” She bit her lip and tried to move about her leg in search of the woman but found nothing. “Doctor?” Her voice was strained and louder.

She’d just got her back. She had just found the Doctor alive. And now? She swallowed thickly. Time Lords couldn’t drown that soon, could they? Their lung capacity was much better than humans, right? Or was she wrong, was the Doctor already dead? Had she misremembered out of fear and killed her?

Her chest heaved and something rubbed against her leg, some form of aquatic plant life, and it jolted her from her fear-thick daze. “Doctor” The tears began to fall as she moved to where she had last seen the Doctor getting ready to jump below the waves. She would either find the Doctor alive or she would rest at the bottom of this ocean with her. She wasn’t leaving her behind. 

She took one final breath, preparing to jump up when the water’s surface broke giving way to a soaked Doctor. 

She had a victorious smile painted on her face and an intricately styled, baby-blue colored, shell in her hand, “Got it.” She turned to Yaz with a smile, holding out her bounty only for her face to fall at Yaz’s tears.

][

She could feel the adrenaline before anything else, before even taking stock of her surroundings. All she knew is that she had just woken up—she had no memory of falling asleep before that, though—wasn’t in the TARDIS, and didn’t know where she was. 

She pushed herself from the chair she’d been resting on and her hands found their way into fists as her chest heaved and she geared up to run. 

Something deep rumbled from the bed beside her. It was the first time she’d really noticed the bed and the body wrapped up in covers atop it. 

Yaz. Yaz was here. She sighed, muscles still tense but fear slowly fading off. Where was ‘here’?

The Doctor looked around until an open window with a backdrop of a light pink beach caught her eyes. The beach. Their vacation. Right. She closed her eyes and collapsed back down into the chair. It was comfortable and the Doctor let out an appreciative hum. She put a hand to her head and sighed again.

Images of yesterday replayed like a vacation slide-show, her episode in the TARDIS, booking the resort, sitting on the beach, swimming in the ocean, Yaz thinking she died and having a panic attack. Would make for a great story, wouldn’t it?

After Yaz’s panic attack the Doctor had walked her out of the ocean to their spot on the beach. They sat in the sand. Yaz pulled herself as close to the Doctor as possible as they did nothing but watch the waves lap against the shore. They sat like that until the sun set and the residual light of day faded and made room for the brisk night.

Then they walked back to their cottage, quickly washing off the sand before falling asleep. 

The Doctor wasn’t too surprised that she had fallen asleep that night. 

][

The morning had slipped back to their usual silence. The Doctor kept trying to find something to talk about but the conversation fell flat when Yaz’s broken face never lifted.

The Doctor was tempted to just leave, get back in the TARDIS and nestle back into the time vortex, but Yaz seemed intent on going out to the beach. 

“Y’sure?” The Doctor asked for the fifth time.

“I’m sure, Doctor.” Yaz crooked the corner of her lips in a sad attempt at a smile. The Doctor opened her mouth to ask once more when Yaz held up a finger, “I’m fine, I am.” She sighed. 

“Okay.” The Doctor nodded. 

Yaz leaned against the counter and crossed her arms, watching as the Doctor meandered about to make their beach bag. Within two minutes she was standing by the door. 

“Hey,” Yaz called to her.

“Yeah?”

“I’m sorry ‘bout last night.”

The Doctor’s eyebrows pinched together and she dropped their beach bag on the floor, “Y’don’t have to apologize.” She made her way back to the kitchen until she was face to face with Yaz where she rested on the kitchen counter.

“No, I ruined the night.”

“Yaz, you didn’t ruin anything. You had a panic attack, that’s okay. I want to sit on the beach with you if the swimming was going to cause you anxiety like that.”

“I thought I’d lost you again.” Her voice took on a wavering quality, as if she were trying to stay in control of her emotions but bitterly losing that competition. “And I just kept thinking ‘I jus’ got you back and I were tryin’ to help by gettin’ us off the TARDIS and you,”She paused for a deep breath, “You, drowned.’ That it were my fault.” Her bottom lip was quivering and that only seemed to make Yaz more upset. “I thought I lost you again. I don’t want to lose you again, Doctor.”

The Doctor reached a hand out to Yaz’s shoulder, “I’m here, Yaz, right here. I’m alive, okay?”

Yaz didn’t pause. Didn’t react to that. “The past year were hell. I spent months planning and trying to find ways to get you back and one day, seven months after Gallifrey, it clicked. You were,” She closed her eyes, “Dead, you were dead and there was nothing I could do to save you and I gave up. I gave up on you when you were still alive, Doctor.” She shook her head and tried to will away the tears but it hadn’t worked and they began to slip down her face. “I gave up on you when you were going through hell.” 

The Doctor looked just as broken, eyes wide and primed with tears, “You didn’t know, Yaz.” Her voice was faint. She reached up and wiped away one of Yaz’s tears, “You couldn’ta known. You moved on and it were better for you to do that.”

The straight line of Yaz’s lips, the small shake of her head, was enough to break something in the Doctor. Something she didn’t know she had. Something that told her look at how you’ve ruined her. “I didn’t move on, Doctor. I jus’ sat in my room and stared at the wall, the tv, I took nothin’ in. Nothin’ happened in those three months.” Yaz’s eyes were red now, “God, I barely ate, barely slept. The times I did sleep were either nightmares about what happened to you or dreams I’d’ve rather lived in than the real world. My life, my world, god, Doctor, it meant nothin’ without and I didn’t want it to.”

Look at how you’ve ruined her.

The Doctor pulled Yaz into a hug to hide the tears that started to fall down her face. “You don’t need my forgiveness, Yaz.”

][

Yaz’s footsteps echoed down the TARDIS hall, the  _ empty _ hall. Empty was important. Important to why her fists were balled and her whole body tense, brimming with energy and anger and rage and confusion.

It had been two weeks since the vacation. Since the beach and her panic attack. Since she opened up to the Doctor. Two weeks since she and the Doctor spent any real time together. 

The Doctor had been distant over the past fourteen days. Treating distance like water. Necessary. Yaz had drowned in it. She’d wake up to empty rooms. Start dinner with the Doctor and end it alone. Walk into a room where the Doctor was working only for the Doctor to spit out some excuse about why she needed to be somewhere else and Yaz once again found herself alone. Alone.

It was an echo, that loneliness. A reverb of two months ago. Of days and nights blurred together, of sickening depression, of steep weight loss, of no sleep, of a time without the Doctor. 

And this echo was completely crafted by the Doctor’s hands. Perfectly so. 

So she was angry. She was angry when she finally found her way into the control room and she was angry when she saw her.

Hunched over the console. Her hand fisted in her hair and her chest expanding and collapsing violently with heaving breaths. 

And she was stopping. The image pausing her in her tracks, causing that standing, fizzing anger to dissipate and make way for concern. 

The Doctor was struggling.

Of course she was struggling.

Yaz’s fists unfurled, her expression softening. 

She’d been so caught up in the ribcage-crushing distance, the pain of the space between them sucking the air from her lungs like a vacuum, that she’d forgotten that the Doctor had also gone through hell last year. 

Here she was so self absorbed. She dug her nails into her palm in some sort of penance and opened her mouth, “Doctor?”

The Doctor jumped, shock and fear coating her reaction. Her breaths only getting faster until she laid eyes on Yaz. She hadn’t been in the TARDIS. She’d been off somewhere. Stuck in her mind. Floating around in some concoction of memories and pain and Yaz had been angry at her.

A tight-lipped smile stretched across her face, “Hiya, Yaz.” That voice was too tense to be cheerful.

“Are y’okay?”

“‘Course,” The Doctor widened her smile but it pulled at her face in an uncomfortable way, contorting it until Yaz was unable to do anything but look away. “Always. Sorry I weren’t there this mornin’ an alarm went off, had to fix somethin’.” 

“You’re okay, okay?” Yaz asked and offered up some smile.

“I know.” The Doctor took a step backwards, “I’m still really busy at the mo’, sorry, we can catch up later?” 

“Sure.”

And there the anger was. Burning away the concern. She made her way up the hexagonal steps and out of the control room.

Something in the corner of her mind begged her to believe that it was her anxiety. Begged her to believe that this was just the paranoia etched into her from high school. But it wasn’t, was it. The Doctor had taken active steps to separate them. Taken active steps to put distance between them after all she had confessed to her on the trip?

There the anger was. And it was searing.

][

The vault was poorly lit and Yaz supposed it fit the mood well. 

Yaz had been trying to ask the Doctor if she wanted to watch a movie or eat dinner, anything that would change the monotony of the past month. Something to try and fill the gap left—no not left, created—by the Doctor. And then the vault sealed them in.

The Doctor tried to no avail to fix that in the first fifteen minutes before sliding down the wall to sit. It was on a cycle, she had explained, that this vault was here to protect the passengers when sterilizing the TARDIS. She had tried to stop the sterilization, it was for when TARDIS where being used to move about all over the universe daily, hourly. But this TARDIS had been in the time vortex for a while now and didn’t need it. But she failed and they were sealed in there for an hour.

It was rare, Yaz being in the same room as the Doctor without the Doctor leaving, more than rare actually, impossible. But now here they were. Together for an hour of uninterrupted time. Yaz didn’t know how to feel about it. 

She was upset and angry. Of course she was. The only way she had been able to spend any amount of time with the Doctor had been an accident. Had been the worst case scenario. The loneliness weighed on her and ate at her and tore at her until all of the injuries she had earned from the past year had reopened and gotten infected. And the fact that the Doctor did this all on purpose? She could feel the flames licking at her skin and she could feel the fire boil her blood. So, she supposed, she was right, the dreary lighting fit the mood.

On the other hand, paradoxically, she was relieved to see the Doctor, the Doctor’s presence an antibiotic to every anxiety, every fear, every single call back to last year that tore at her soul, that the distance had reignited. The Doctor had helped. And it only made her more angry.

Yaz had no idea had to voice any of this. Whether to say ‘you’re making me relive my trauma’ or ‘I desperately need you otherwise I fall apart’ or ‘I don’t know whether to be pissed at you or thankful you’re here right now’. Or even how to go about saying that in the first place. And the Doctor never wanted to say anything. So they sat in that vault, their bloated emotions marinating the silence. 

It had been twenty uncomfortable minutes. Twenty minutes of failed small talk and passive aggression and twenty minutes of nothing. It had been twenty minutes until the Doctor started shaking, heavy but quick breaths beating out of her faster than Yaz’s heartbeat. Her head fell to her knees which were brought up to her chest.

“Doctor?” She didn’t respond. Yaz reached out a hand to her shoulder, she was tense, “It’s okay, you’re here. You’re safe, I’m with you, it’s okay. It’s okay. You’re here on the TARDIS and you’re going to be okay, you’re not alone.”

“I’m fine.” Her voice was rough and her jaw was clenched and she was anything but fine. Yaz bit her lip. “I jus’ need a lil’ space, is all. Please.” 

“Let me help.”

“No, Yaz, I’m fine. I don’t need your help, I’m okay.”

Yaz’s eyes stung and glossed over, “Okay.” And she pushed herself away. Far away. As far as she could get. And the Doctor did too.


	2. Chapter 2

Yaz fell back against the wall, sliding down it until her knees were to her chest. It had been a month. A whole month in near solitude and the nightmares had been getting worse. Everything had been getting worse, life seemed pointless, painful. 

Because either the Doctor didn’t need her, didn’t miss her over the last year, or didn’t care about her. Why else would she have handled Yaz’s fractured, corpse of life in such a callous manner?

The Doctor hated her. The Doctor hated her and she spent the last year trying to save her and then mourning her. Perpetually grieving. She had given up on the Doctor only to find the Doctor had lived and given up on Yaz.

Her stomach churned and tied itself into knots. Her bottom lip shook and her eyes burned and burned until drops fell from them. All she could do was wrap her arms tighter in some baseless hope that she could keep the pieces of her fractured soul from falling apart.

How many times had she found herself like this when she thought the Doctor was dead? How many times had she collapsed against a wall and sobbed and sobbed and sobbed and held her knees to her chest until she felt numb? 

When she hugged the Doctor for that first time she didn’t think she’d ever be back here. Collapsed in upon herself and so hopelessly alone. It fucking hurt.

She was back in that year. That dark year. She hadn’t escaped it. She hadn’t escaped it. She hadn’t escaped it. She hadn’t—

She clenched her jaw and her eyes shut as the sobs began to tear through her chest.

She hadn’t escaped it.

Her breath was unsteady in between tears and her whole body was shaking. And then there was a hand on her shoulder. Steady, warm, feigned. She hadn’t heard the footsteps, hadn’t seen the Doctor’s coat, or culottes, or boots, but here she was. Hand on Yaz’s shoulder like she cared. 

Yaz rolled her shoulder, “Get away from me.” Her voice was sharp and it stripped the warmth from the air that the Doctor had tried to provide. She clambered to her feet and looked forward. Determined to keep her eyes off the Doctor.

“Yaz?” She could hear the confusion in her voice, “I just wanna—”

“Help?” Yaz stopped and finally turned back to face her. The Doctor’s face had been just as Yaz predicted, contorted, eyebrows pinched together, lips slightly parted, eyes glassy, pained, confused. “That’s rich coming from you. Since when did you care?”

“Yaz?”

“I opened up to you, I tell you the hell I’ve been through and your reaction is to push me away? You might be an idiot but you’re smart enough to know how that had to’ve hurt me. You have hurt me. You continue to hurt me so don’t even pretend that you care now.”

She turned away before the Doctor could even respond. Before she could even see the Doctor’s face react. And she started walking. 

Feet against metal. Footfalls echoing in the empty hallways, padded footsteps marking a destinationless path. The Doctor didn’t follow after her and the tears returned.

Yaz didn’t know how much time had passed when she finally returned to her room with sore feet, a headache, and damp cheeks.

][

The Doctor didn’t know what to do. The shards of her last relationship cut deep into her hand and lodged themselves there. Pain wasn’t a new thing. 

Her fractured identity had gouged out enough of her that insecurity and fear and pain were left in its wake. That had been the standard for the last year.

Isolation’ll do that to you, make your newest pain your favorite form of entertainment because it was so much better than the demons that had been lurking and gaining strength for centuries. Memories projected on to cell block walls, always with the jarring reminder that they were false. Because they _were_ false. Her memories weren’t real if the foundation they had been built upon wasn’t. If everything she knew was based on a lie, was a lie, how could the memories she made living the lie be true? She didn’t know who she was or what she had done. Hell, all of the awful, monstrous things she could remember doing were only the tip of the iceberg.

So, pain wasn’t new.

But the way her body reacted to it, processed, it was. Her hearts hammered in her head, dull thudding that drowned out the rest of the world. Everything felt as if it was happening miles and miles away from where she was stranded. Cold, burning cold seeped into her bones and she couldn’t shake the feeling of numbing pain.

She’d just hurt the only person who even cared about her anymore, the only person she hadn't driven away or killed, the only person still left for her to care about, the only person left to care for her.

She didn’t want this. Not in the slightest. 

Yaz had been so broken, so lost when the Doctor was gone and the Doctor wanted nothing more than to erase that, remove her codependency from existence. She had broken Yaz’s life. She would ruin it. This relationship wasn’t stable, wasn’t more than a flicker of light in the vast and endless night sky of the Doctor’s life. It wouldn’t last long. It couldn’t last long. Yaz’s life was barely a speck on hers and in the end she’d be a memory before the Doctor could even blink.

Their relationship wasn’t a guarantee. It was unstable and chaotic. It wouldn’t last long and if by some stroke of luck this universe wasn’t as godless as if felt, Yaz would be left stranded without her. Not dead. Not gone by choice. But stranded.

She’d done that for a single year and it had driven Yaz so far into depression that she collapsed in upon herself. The Doctor would wreck her life. She might not die but what was the difference if Yaz wouldn’t actually live on? If Yaz made her life pointless and hollow because of her. 

The Doctor cared too much for her, felt too much for her to let that happen. To be the reason she became like that. But that’s what happened anyway. In her attempt to save her she only created the situation she was desperate to prevent.

She had hurt Yaz.

][

Yaz couldn’t separate or count the hours that had passed. It all seemed to melt and mesh together into something she didn’t quite want to feel. Something hazy.

She didn’t want to think about it so she didn’t. She had been able to stave off the thoughts with dissociation, eyes stuck on the ceiling and tears still trailing down her face.

She faded in and out of consciousness as if on some calm sea that left her on the shore only to pull her from shore hours later. 

She lounged on that shore, barely aware of the sand beneath her or the water that approached, heat baking away her tears. 

Then three knocks. Subtle and quiet she almost didn’t recognize them until they came again. Her heart jolted. She didn’t say anything, didn’t know what to say, didn’t want to. But her lips moved anyway, a short, “Come in,” falling past her lips and speaking where she hadn’t intended to. 

The door creaked as it swung open, making way for the Doctor. Yaz looked over to her only to meet red eyes and a shattered face. Yaz looked back at the ceiling. Boots on wood. 

“I’m sorry, Yaz. I’m so sorry, okay? I really am.”

Yaz bit her lip. This past month killed her and all she wanted was the Doctor to apologize but that doesn’t change the fact that last month burned. She didn’t know what to do, what to say, how do you say something to that? An apology was only half the work. 

She could hear the Doctor’s feet shuffle against the wood, scruff after scruff. “And I jus’— I never meant to hurt you—”

“Then what did you mean to do?” Anger pulsed through Yaz’s veins again, it was fresh and hot and it killed the lethargy that had flooded her. She sighed and swung her legs off the bed and stood up. Face to face with the Doctor.

“You’ve every right to be upset—”

“I’m so much more than upset, Doctor.”

“Please, Yaz, please just listen to me, okay? I’ll leave, I won’t talk to you, but please just let me explain.”

Yaz crossed her arms. Her eyebrow cocked, she nodded at the Doctor. 

There was a sigh of relief. “Thank you, Yaz, thank you.” She was about to express her gratitude once more when Yaz shot her a stern glance. “Last year, while I were gone you became depressed. And, of course, y’can’t help it, but—” She shook her head and ran a hand through her hair. “If something happens to me—when something happens to me, to us, to this, I can’t ruin your life. I can’t be the reason your life crashes ‘round you. I won’t do that. I can’t do that. I was gone a year and you kept slipping further and further away from living. What happens next time? What if you, you, you—” She clenched her jaw, and tears began to slip down her cheeks. “What if you can’t find something to keep living for? I—I just need to know that if something happens again you won’t, won’t,” She sighed and shook her head, “You’ll find something else to live for, someone else. Sonya, or Hakim, or Yaz’s mum, or Ryan, or Graham, or me, or just something, anything.”

Yaz sighed, opened her mouth, and then sighed again. She didn’t know what to say. She was tired. So tired and the Doctor was crying and she was tired. She yawned and shook her head before reaching forward and pulling the Doctor against her chest. The Doctor went stiff, unsure of how to respond or if she was allowed to reciprocate. 

“My depression and how I handle it isn’t your fault. How I react to things isn’t your responsibility.” Her voice was muffled by the bunched up hood of the Doctor’s coat around her neck. “You don’t deserve to have that weight on you. Nobody does.”

“Preventative measures, Yaz.” Her voice was so sad. So hoarse and just broken and all Yaz could do was pull her tighter. 

The hug lasted another thirty seconds before they pulled away. “Does this mean you’re not mad at me anymore?”

“I’m still mad, Doctor.” Yaz sighed. “Still bloody mad and upset. But, I mean, you acted out of fear, you made a mistake, is all.”

She fell back to sitting on her bed and yawned again. 

“I’ll, um,” The Doctor gestured over her shoulder and made a move towards the door, “Um, yeah—”

“No.” Yaz was up in a heartbeat, hand outstretched in some plea she hoped the Doctor would listen to. The Doctor turned back to face her. “Stay, please, stay. I don’t want to be alone tonight.”

The Doctor wiped away her tears with the back of her hand and nodded. “Okay.” She scratched the back of her neck and moved towards the chair. Something panged in the bottom of Yaz’s gut. She pats the bed next to her and looks to the Doctor with wide and wet eyes.

The Doctor sighs and takes her seat, making herself comfortable next to Yaz. Their proximity set off alarms within Yaz, a pleasant—if almost painful?—buzzing in her gut, a nervous tightening in her chest. The heat of the Doctor’s breath warmed her cheek and Yaz relaxed. 

The Doctor had been upset at her for her depression? Was upset that Yaz mourned her? The Doctor had recreated the last year in an attempt to prevent it from ever recurring. The Doctor did it out of care but did that really matter? Who was the Doctor to police Yaz’s reactions and emotions? 

But she didn’t want to think about it. The Doctor was here now, her breath on her cheek, her warmth radiating until it engulfed Yaz. Her chest tightened and her stomach fluttered. Anger. It must’ve been anger.

][

It had gone on longer than she had wanted or expected. Longer than usual. The nightmare. She jolted awake. Unsure of when the tears started. She reached a hand out to the other side of the bed, reflexively looking for the Doctor for comfort. A night of terror had washed away the previous nights’ anger from shore. Until her hand found nothing but barely warm, empty sheets. 

And the anger was found as the tide receded, lodged in the sand. And it fueled her. She ripped the covers from her form, not even waiting for the rest of her body to fully wake up. She threw open the door to her room, angry and tired, and confused, and angry—

The Doctor sat, back to the wall, opposite of Yaz’s door. Knees drawn to her chest, head hung between them. Her form was shaking with each breath and Yaz slowed. 

“Doctor?”

She looked up slowly before letting her head fall back down. Yaz crossed the floor and knelt down next to her, hovering a cautious hand over the Doctor’s shoulder before letting it rest there, the Doctor jumped, she was only now finally aware of Yaz’s presence.

“Yaz?”

Her face was damp, tear stained. And something broke in Yaz’s chest, “I’m here, Doctor. You’re here with me, it’s okay, I’ve got you.”

She moved forward, resting her head against Yaz’s chest, and wrapped her arms around Yaz until she was as close to her as she could get.

“Hey,” Yaz whispered. She couldn’t help the way tears welled in her eyes. She laid a hand on the back of the Doctor’s head in what she hoped would be comforting. She knew she did. “I’m here.”

While Yaz sat there guilt blossomed across her stomach, wrapped around her organs, until she felt she was choking on it. Here the Doctor was having an emotional breakdown, reliving something awful and her first reaction was to get angry. To tell the Doctor off.

She was awful. Awful and selfish. Awful and selfish and horrible.

The Doctor pulled away from Yaz just enough to look up at her.

“I’m sorry I left you alone this morning.” The weeds twisted tighter. 

“Don’t apologize.” Yaz bit her lip, “What happened?” Her voice was so gentle, soft around the edges in a way that the Doctor wasn’t expecting.

“I, uh, just had a flashback to prison, is all.” The Doctor’s eyes were too red, voice too hoarse, for Yaz to believe that it was as small and meaningless as the Doctor wanted her to think. 

“You act like it’s nothing.” 

“I mean, the twelve months of isolation weren’t the most fun but-”

“Twelve months, Doctor?” Yaz’s face fell. “Twelve months? All alone for twelve months?”

“I mean, sorta, I guess, it wasn’t that bad. I spent a lot of my time drawing on the walls or trying to talk to the guards—”

“You’re deflecting.” The Doctor’s ‘I’m about to go on a tangent’ face broke.

“It wasn’t fun. It wasn’t the worst thing I’ve ever gone through but—you know me, Yaz, I can’t handle silence. I can’t handle my thoughts. I can’t handle myself. And those three things were all I had.” 

“Doctor.” 

“And I mean, all I could think about was what I’d just learned from the Master. And all those I’ve lost and broken and hurt. And, Yaz, you were almost another name on such a long, long list and I—" She sighed, catching herself and holding herself back from saying something that was on the tip of her tongue. Yaz would’ve given anything to grab it from her mouth and know what it was because the Doctor swallowed it in the next breath. “I care about you too much. I don’t want that to be you. I’ve hurt so many people, Yaz, and I don’t want that to be you.

“And all that I’ve done. All the carnage I bring with me, don’t say you don’ see it because I guarantee you do.” She let her head fall to her hands. “I’m not a good person, Yaz, and you know what, I’ve never wanted to tell you, to let you see, but that’s so unfair to you, isn’t it?”

“What are you talkin’ about, Doctor?” 

“I’ve killed people, Yaz, I’ve hurt people, sometimes on purpose and you’ven’t seen that side of me ‘cause I didn’t want y’to but how long before I hurt you too? It’s unfair because you have no idea what kind of monster you’re dealing with, what kind of monster you’re sitting with right now, and I was so terrified of you seeing it but I was selfish. So god-damned selfish and it almost got you killed.”

“Doctor, you’re not a bad person.” 

“You wouldn’t know.”

“And I don’t have to.” She held out her hand before resting her palm to her cheek. It felt strangely too intimate, but the Doctor needed it. She wiped away her tears. “Who hasn’t done bad things in their life? Terrible things? We’ve all intentionally hurt others. We’ve all done the wrong thing. We’ve all acted selfishly. You feeling guilt, remorse is what determines you as a person. You choosing to make good decisions even when it is hard, you choosing to do the right thing, is what determines your morality. And I know you. I’ve seen you do the right thing, help people even when you didn’t need to, when it wouldn’t affect you either way. That’s who you are. That’s you, Doctor. I don’t care about your past. I don’t care what you’ve done because it doesn’t matter, all that matters is who you try to be today and tomorrow.” 

The Doctor didn’t say anything, she opened her mouth and made an attempt, but she didn’t say anything. She just wrapped her arms around Yaz again and pulled her tight. And cried. She cried until she had nothing left to give.

][

Yaz was falling. Fear and vertigo filled her. The weightless feeling was nothing compared to the idea that this plunge was an omen of a grim ending. But the end wasn’t near. She kept on falling, falling falling in some grey undefined space. 

She looked to her right, hoping to find anything that might help her or give her hope or anything that could possibly relieve the ever billowing dread in her gut. 

She saw the Doctor. Not really there, actually, just faded into the background as if Yaz was looking at her through some sort of veil. But eventually the gray faded into a new image. It was the Doctor.

Yaz reached a cautious hand towards her but she couldn’t see herself. She wasn’t visible. 

The Doctor was standing next to Yaz, their hands entwined, bathed in some dim golden light. They were both smiling. It was positioned and perfect and tranquil—and the Doctor leaned forward and long dark spindly fingers wrapped around the Doctor’s torso but the Doctor didn’t notice them, instead she just kept moving forward and forward until Yaz and her couldn’t get any closer and the hand finally yanked her out of the golden spotlight. She yelled and fought but it was no use.

The light started to dim upon Yaz until she was shrouded in darkness too. 

Then the image shifted. Yaz crouched, back against a wall, in a room that wasn’t even fully conceptualized. Just a corner and the two walls that made it. There seemed to be light from some outside source but it didn’t exist, at least couldn’t be seen, anyway. 

That Yaz was crying and she was saying something but Yaz couldn’t hear her. She understood though, the thoughts and the emotions that came with it. 

_My life means nothing without the Doctor. The Doctor is dead and that’s how I’d rather be._

And then guilt. Hatred. So much anger and self-hatred it was overwhelming, overpowering. Yaz gasped, reaching a hand to her chest.

Then the Doctor was there. She was on her knees in front of Yaz, begging her to stop thinking that, stop feeling that. 

_That Yaz shouldn’t throw her life away because of her. That it was all her fault and that she was sorry, so immensely sorry. And scared. Scared for Yaz._

That Yaz couldn’t see her, couldn’t hear her, couldn’t feel her. Her presence never registered and it only made the Doctor more frantic. 

More shots of emotions, fear, pain, guilt, guilt, worry, concern, guilt, anger, guilt, guilt. And there was nothing she could do but just feel them. Let the emotions wash over her until they were too much. So much. 

And then the scene switched again. 

It was now the Doctor standing in front of some stone, some overwhelming stone and Yaz felt a deep weight in her gut. She didn’t need to read it to know what it was so she didn’t. She turned to face the Doctor fully and kept herself planted there.

The Doctor was crying, on her knees, standing at the stone, holding her hands up. One of them held a chisel. Both were drenched in blood. Absolutely stained. The red dropped and dropped from her hands and splattered against the ground before disappearing between blades of grass. 

And then the blood was slowly spreading up the Doctor’s form. Red soaking her clothes and turning her a deep incarnadine. 

She was saying something and still Yaz couldn’t hear it but she knew what the meaning was. 

_It’s all my fault. It’s my fault. I killed her. I killed her. I-_

Her tears only got heavier. 

Yaz couldn’t resist the temptation to look any longer. With a shaky breath, tight fists and jaw, she turned round slowly until she was fully facing the stone. It was small, barely up to her waist, made of polished granite. 

Yaz finally understood where the blood came from, why the Doctor had a chisel. In shaky letters:

_Yasmin Umbreen Khan. Killed by the Doctor, someone she trusted. Gone too soon._

And beneath that.

_It’s my fault. It’s my fault. It’s my fault._

Red blood seeped from the markings and it was too much. Far too much. The fear gripped her, wrapped around her gut, and clenched down upon it until Yaz could feel her body shuddering and shaking and she could feel the comforting weight of the blanket. 

She was awake. It was a dream. It was a dream and yet she couldn’t shake the feeling of immense guilt and fear. It was overwhelming to the point of nausea. 

Her eyes were glossy, cheeks damp. She tried shaking, hoping to sweep away the lingering sand from those images that weighed her down but it didn’t really work. But she didn’t stop. She sat up to find the Doctor asleep in the chair, her chair. And it finally clicked.

Time Lords, telepathic. The Doctor must’ve somehow brought Yaz along for her dream, or pushed the dream into her head, either way, it didn’t matter.

She looked back over at the Doctor, cast about the chair in such an uncomfortable way. Yaz couldn’t imagine what hell that would pay on her body the next day but then again it probably wasn’t comparable to the pain she had felt from that dream though. 

That dream.

Shit, the Doctor was still in that dream. Still living through _that._ Yaz pushed the covers away from her form and quickly closed the space between them in some attempt, in some hope of waking the Doctor. It wasn’t too difficult either. 

She placed two hands on each of the Doctor’s shoulders and lightly shook her, that and the curt, “Doctor,” was enough to rouse her. 

She could see now, this close to her, that the Doctor was crying. Her eyes opened and they were glossy. “Yaz,” She croaked. 

“I’m here, Doc, I’m here.” 

“M’sorry if I woke’y, nightmares. I, uh,” She yawned, “I usually don’t fall asleep that easy.”

“You didn’t wake me, I woke up,” Yaz contemplated telling the Doctor why but dreams were personal, weren’t they? And the Doctor already despised being vulnerable by choice it would’ve been deeply upsetting to realize she had been so vulnerable and open without any thought or hand in the matter, “Dunno, why, jus’ happens sometimes, I guess. And even if y’did you wouldn’t need to apologize, you were having a nightmare. I mean, I could tell something was wrong, you were muttering and crying and I didn’t want to leave you in that state.”

The Doctor yawned again. “Thank you.” She wiped the back of her hand across her cheeks until the stray tears had left. “I, um, I’m good now, you can go to sleep if you’d like.”

“Doctor, you’re not good, it’s okay for you to not be okay, you know that, right?” 

The Doctor just sighed and Yaz decided that any attempts to help her would bear no fruit this late at night, so Yaz sighed too. She moved back slowly—limbs still groggy from sleep now that her concern had started to fade—until she was able to sit down on her bed. She scooched back until there was enough room beside her for another person and she patted the mattress. “C’mere.”

“Hmm?” The Doctor yawned. 

“If you’re gonna sleep you should sleep in a bed, it’s not good for you.” Yaz yawned again and cursed herself for it, “Besides, I think I’d be good at fighting off nightmares, so let me help.” 

The Doctor was too tired to fight back. So she didn’t. She just stood up and shrugged off her coat, removed her suspenders and trousers and one of her shirts, before climbing into bed next to Yaz. She smiled, if only slightly, “Thank you, Yaz.” 

Yaz’s stomach flew with that and she didn’t know what to call it or what to think. All she knew was that once she put her arms around the Doctor all tension and fear fell away to nothing.

God, the Doctor was so worried for her. The Doctor was so terrified. She made an accident out a fear and worry and concern and terror and all Yaz could do was judge her for it. Get upset at her for it. Not understand what she was going through or that she was struggling with things too.

She bit her lip and tried to shake away the nagging weight in her gut, but it was no use. Something for another day, she supposed, and let sand softly blanket her consciousness until she was asleep.

Neither of them had a nightmare that night.

][

It had been a handful of days since Yaz had accidentally peeped on the Doctor’s nightmare.

She had been able to dust away the fear and the worry but the guilt, of both seeing a part of the Doctor that she hadn’t wanted her to see, and being terrible to her when she was just so worried and terrified, hadn’t gone away as easily.

Yaz sat on the steps of the TARDIS control room, hands digging into the metal grooves of the traction-ensured floor. The sharp sensation was welcome. Always welcome. It kept her rooted in the moment, kept her from lingering on the dregs of last year. 

Tired eyes cast out into the control room where the Doctor was quietly working against her machine. She had been quiet ever since that night. Like she was trying to regain the emotional distance that she lost then. Like everything hidden beneath the surface had finally bubbled up and the Doctor didn’t know how to contend with it. 

Yaz hoped that she helped, even a little, to calm the storm that raged beneath that mask. It stung, burned, to know that the Doctor felt that way about herself and Yaz would give anything to give her peace of mind. 

Some longing part in the back of her mind wondered, quietly, if the Doctor felt—cared—the same way. The hope tasted sour on her tongue. The thought burned her. She didn’t want to dwell on it. 

“Hey,” She said, letting the words echo in the ever expanding chamber in front of her.

“Hmm?” The Doctor barely spared her a glance over the shoulder. 

Yaz pushed herself up from her seat and the Doctor finally gave her a full look. She turned to face her and Yaz’s footsteps resounded in the console room louder than either had expected. She stopped when she was within arms length of the Doctor. 

“Hey.”

“Hey.”

“Where are you, Doctor?”

“Nowhere, here, where else?” 

Yaz just raised an eyebrow.

“I’m jus’, it’s nothin’.”

“If it’s important enough to affect you it’s not nothing and I care, Doctor.”

“I,” the Doctor let out a sigh. “Yaz, do y’know what I found out back on Gallifrey?”

“You haven’t talked about it.”

“'ave you ever found out that something you’ve lived by your whole life is a lie?” She sighed, but the anger and hurt still broiled underneath it all, calmed only by time. “The Timeless Child, some child found abandoned on another planet, was taken in by the Gallifreyans before they were Time Lords. And well, that kid died, but the kid didn’t stay dead. With each death the kid regenerated and the Gallifreyan who found them experimented on them over and over again, abused and tortured that kid until she could find out the key to living forever. Then they stole it from that kid and erased their memories. They tortured and abused and tested and experimented on that kid, on-”

“Doctor?" Yaz's patient curiosity at the Doctor's story faded once the Doctor loser her objective tone. With each sentence her voice devolved from control to panic and anger.

“On,” The Doctor sighed again and closed her eyes, “I was that kid, Yaz.” The pain seemed distant. Like she had buried it beneath everything else in her chaotic life until it couldn’t stay buried anymore. 

Yaz opened her mouth to say something but the glassy hazel eyes across from her stopped those words in the back of her throat. She wrapped two arms around the Doctor and pulled her close. Pulled her close until the heat of their embrace was comforting. Physically anyway. Until Yaz could feel the Doctor resting her forehead down against her shoulder, leaving two damp marks there. Until the Doctor finally let it out, something she’d internalized and buried for Yaz couldn’t even begin to imagine how long, let the wound air out. And Yaz would be there to protect it from bacteria, from germs. 

][

They were sharing some pizza and quiet time. There wasn’t much new in their lives to talk about unless they wanted the conversation to steer to less pleasant things. So they stopped the issue at its source.

Neither minded, the Doctor had a book and Yaz enjoyed the peace, the comfort of quiet company. Well, it was quiet, until, “I’m sorry.”

“Yaz?” The Doctor looked up from her book with a quirked eyebrow.

Yaz sighed and let the dam crack under the pressure of guilt and self hatred, “I’m sorry for yelling at you and, and, and,” She sighed, “I’m so sorry for how I treated you, you’re going through so much and I was so selfish and I’m so sorry, Doctor.”

“You’re okay.” The Doctor had kept her calm, neither upset nor relieved at the apology.

“No, I’m not, I'm an awful person.”

“Yaz, you’re okay, you’re not an awful person—”

“But—”

“Would you please listen to me?” Her voice was soft, maybe a shade of irritation but it was overcast by so much care and understanding. When Yaz didn’t say anything the Doctor sighed, “Thank you. What you did wasn’t okay, no, but _you_ are. You made a mistake, we all do, and I forgive. As far as I’m concerned, matter’s done. Okay?”

The deep creases of worry painted into Yaz’s face smeared and blended to smooth lines. The pressure, the gnawing guilt, washed away and all that it left in its wake was an, “Okay.”

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> y'all leave a comment if you could it mean the world  
> thanks for the read! hope y'all are liking it!


	3. Chapter 3

Time in the TARDIS passed relatively slowly when they weren’t going on adventure after adventure. They filled it with undemanding activities. They read books, binged Brooklyn Nine Nine, worked on the TARDIS, or slept. They didn’t talk. Neither of them knew how to continue past this point. 

The Doctor had so much more worse things to have nightmares about, the people she’d lost, the blood on her hand, the people who abused her for their own power and purpose and then lied to her about it. So why was the thing that plagued her nightmares Yaz? Yaz dying because of her? Yaz falling into a depression. All of the amazing people she’s met, all of the amazing people she's known and had an effect on and she dreamt of Yaz? Worried about Yaz. Why?

The thought tugged at her stomach in such an uncomfortable way, an almost weighted… something? Yaz wasn’t sure what to do with it. So she didn’t do anything but shelve it for a later date. There was already too much to think about and process.

One of those being the Doctor’s trauma, her past. How do you even begin to console someone who’s entire people tortured and abused them in some act of hubris and then erased it from their memory? How do you help someone who’s entire life was completely shaken up from it’s foundation? Yaz wasn’t sure. But it hurt, knowing the Doctor was struggling and there was barely a thing Yaz could do. Sure, she could show her unyielding support, keep her floating when it’s hard on her own, but there was only so much she could say. Was the Doctor’s psychology anywhere near to that of a human’s for the typical human coping and healing to be of any use? All Yaz could do was cross her fingers and hope something she had learned during her years in therapy was enough to help the Doctor, even a little. 

So they didn’t talk. 

The Doctor had gotten back to tinkering on the console, something with the navigation system was off. She laid across the control room floor, goggles on, wrench in hand, stuck under the console. Clanging sounds and the occasional one sided banter from her barely made its way out her vicinity but Yaz still enjoyed it.

Yaz had a book in hand. 

_You see, the thing about-_

Thud.

_You see, the thing-_

Thud.

_You see, the thing about-_

Clang.

_You see, the thing about Artie-_

Bang. 

That was her final straw. Yaz let the book fall to her lap and looked over to the Doctor. Still flat on her back, legs cast astrew, while her hands worked furiously at the machine.

The Doctor still looked—not amazing, amazing wasn’t the right word, but what was? Beautiful? Captivating?—Still held her attention better than any star in the universe, even with the mess she was. Grease across her face, probably on her nose, knowing the Doctor, goggles over hazel eyes and blonde hair askew. Lithe form stretched and tensed while it worked expertly away at the machinery. Fingers that knew exactly every button, every wire to push and meld together. 

Yaz bit her lip. Thoughts racing, heart pounding and, god damn it, why? She needed something to distract herself. 

The book.

Right. 

_You see, the thing about Artie was-_

Bang.

“Fuck.” 

“Hmm?” The Doctor pushed herself out from underneath the console and looked across to Yaz, “Y’say something?”

“Nah,” Yaz shook her head, “Was nothin’.”

“Y’sure?”

“Just reacting to the book.” She held it up for emphasis.

“Mhmm, books’ll do that to ya’.” She laid back down and scooted herself back into her nook and Yaz sighed. She decided against struggling with that same forsaken sentence and decided that she’d rather just relax. All except her eyes; that was something she was going to keep good control over. There was no reason to let her eyes wander when her mind would too.

She memorized the page number and closed the book, setting it down to the floor, before leaning back onto her hands and sighing. They had yet to have dinner and something about the tasty, greasy, melting mozzarella of pizza that just called to her. She cast a look down to the Doctor, “What you do y’think about pizza for supper?” 

The Doctor was limp, completely still. 

“Doctor?” Her heartbeat started to pick up until she heard nothing but her pulse, thick and deafening. “Doctor.” Her chest was heaving as she pushed herself up from the stairs. She ran across the control room and threw herself to her knees next to the Doctor’s form.

She picked up her wrist and felt for her pulse, it was faint—worryingly faint—but still there. Yaz let out a sigh she didn’t know had gotten trapped in her lungs and wiped away the dampness from her cheeks. Tears had been pretty common recently.

She took in a deep breath but couldn’t hide the tremors from her limbs. She moved forward until she was level with the Doctor’s shoulders and leaned forward until she could reach a hand underneath the Doctor’s head. Careful with her head, she pulled back on the Doctor’s shoulders and she slid against the floor. 

Eventually her head was out from beneath the console and Yaz sighed, tears still falling from her face.

“Doctor?” She moved the goggles from her face to find her eyes closed behind the glass. “Doctor, please wake up, come on—”

There was a beeping from the TARDIS console and she looked up to some screen to find: _She’s unconscious. Electrical shock. She’ll wake up in five minutes. She’ll be fine._

“Y’sure?”

Another beep. _Yes. It shocked her systems into a ‘reset’. She’ll be fine._

Yaz sighed and lifted the Doctor’s upper body until she could hold her to her chest. Yaz wasn’t sure how long she sat there. She didn’t think. She couldn’t think. She just cried. The Doctor was safe. The Doctor was here. The smell of her—grease, a hint of vanilla—was enough to soothe her heart rate but her worry was still prominent. Still very much alive.

“Yaz?” The confusion on her voice was lilted. She was confused, unsure. 

“I’m here.” Yaz’s voice was barely there.

“What happened?”

“Y’fell unconscious, or somethin’. You went still, stopped moving, an’ talking, and I thought…” She trailed off. The Doctor hugged her a bit closer, she didn’t need to finish the sentence. “The TARDIS told me you’d be fine, that it were an electric shock, or somethin’.” She wiped the back of her hand across her face.

“Ah,” The Doctor said. She pulled back from Yaz and offered her a reassuring smile, “That happens. I wasn’t being careful enough and must’ve hit the wrong wire. Electricity rebooted my system.” 

“You’re okay?”

“Don’t trust my TARDIS?” The TARDIS groaned and turned a deeper shade of amber.

“No, I trust her, ‘n all, jus’ I were worried.” The color hadn’t returned to her voice. She looked drained, tired, completely exhausted.

“M’sorry I scared you.”

Yaz sighed and squeezed her eyes shut for a moment, gathering herself, before looking back over to the Doctor. “Doctor, there is so much I still want to do with you. So much I want to know about you. Doctor, I want you and I don’t think it will ever be enough.”

“Nobody leaves with perfect timing, Yaz.”

“I know, I just—” She shook her head, “I want to spend the rest of my life with you.”

The Doctor opened her mouth like she was going to say something more, open some can of worms, talk about something that neither of them wanted to talk about.

“We don’t have to talk about it, Doctor.” She let out a sigh, “I don’t want to talk about it.”

The Doctor shook her head and reached a hand up to wipe away one of Yaz’s tears. “Okay.”

][

The space station was well lit. Relaxingly so. It was a nice change of pace compared to the TARDIS. The TARDIS always felt homely, of course, but between it’s dim lit rooms and corridors and the tension that permeated the space it was uncomfortable.

The Doctor didn’t remember who had suggested leaving, whether it was her or Yaz. She may have made a comment about wanting time away or about knowing this really peaceful space resort. Or something. Or it may have been Yaz’s suggestion. But here they were.

Yaz sighed. The Doctor wished to share in her relaxation, hopefully that would come later, but she just felt so heavy.

Prison wasn’t good. It wasn’t the worst thing she’d ever experienced, relatively mild compared to everything. Being able to slow down and sleep and think was a weird change of pace. But it only solidified why she never wanted to go slow in the first place.

Every single thing she’d ever ran from caught up to her in that place. The prison changed into a place for her demons to finally sink their teeth into her. To finally possess her and now here she was in complete need of an exorcism. 

Yaz had eased some of it, 

_I don’t care what you’ve done because it doesn’t matter, all that matters is who you try to be today and tomorrow._

And sure, maybe Yaz was right. Wise beyond her years, Yaz was. But it didn’t change the fact that she doesn’t even know the story of her own life. Maybe she wasn’t a monster now but she doesn’t know what happened before. Whole portions of her life just erased and she could’ve been anyone, done anything. If any one of her unknown previous lives was a bad person, if they made active decisions to harm someone and do awful things, didn’t that mean she was a bad person now? She sighed. 

“Doctor?”

She looked up from her hotel bed. She wasn’t sure how long ago she’d disconnected from the world or how they got to their hotel room.

“Jus’ thinkin’, is all.” 

“No, you’re not.” Yaz’s voice wasn’t accusatory but soft as she strode forward and dipped down onto the bed aside Yaz.

“Yaz, entire lives of mine are missing and I have no idea what happened in them or who I was or what I did. What if I was a bad person?”

“Only you,” Yaz sighed, “Maybe you were but it doesn’t change the fact that you aren’t now. That you actively try to be good now. Doctor, you had years of your lives forcibly removed, you were abused. You are the only person I know who would, out of all that’s happened, pick that to focus on. It shows you care. It shows—” She shook her head. “Doctor, you are the best person I ever met, regardless of your past and what you can and can’t remember. And you don’t deserve to have this weight on you.” 

The Doctor sighed, eyes teary, as she looked at Yaz. She had never wanted to cry in front of Yaz but that hadn’t stopped her in the past and that wouldn’t stop her now. And regardless, Yaz wouldn’t judge her vulnerability. Wouldn’t run from it. Wouldn’t run from it. Wouldn’t run from it. 

Yaz stayed while the Doctor revealed all the tar that covered her seemingly pristine life. While the Doctor revealed the tarmac that her footsteps resounded from everytime she tried and tried to run away. And Yaz just stood there. Yaz didn’t run from it.

Yaz didn’t—

“C’mere.” Yaz leaned forward and wrapped her arms around the Doctor, the Doctor didn’t hesitate to embrace Yaz back. 

Eventually they found themselves lying across the bed. The Doctor still held onto Yaz and Yaz onto her. Yaz had drifted off after some time and eventually so did the Doctor.

][

Yaz was the first to wake up. As her mind drifted further and further away from unconsciousness she became increasingly aware of a few strands of hair tickling her cheek. Blonde hair.

The Doctor’s warm body was pressed up against Yaz and she let out a muted yawn before smiling softly at her peaceful look. If she could spend the rest of their vacation like this she would have; the Doctor nestled in her arms, breath warm on her face. She looked so beautiful, angelic really, when she wasn’t carrying the weight of worlds on her shoulders. She didn’t deserve that. She was too perfect, stunning, beautiful, smart, creative, funny—

She was everything.

And there it was. Some knot that had finally received it’s last tug settled heavily in the pit of her stomach, heavy enough to break through her comfort and calm and replace it with an unsettling darkness.

Shame spread out across her chest and she steeped in it. 

She didn’t know where it came from or why she was dealing with it. She hadn’t done anything wrong. But there it was plain as day. She needed to hide her face, needed to move away, get away from there.

She untangled herself from the Doctor, her heart attempting to hammer it’s way out of her chest. She moved back and the Doctor stayed sleeping and she sighed. She got off the bed and got lost in their hotel room.

][

The morning passed by slowly, the Doctor slept in another hour, and Yaz tried to distract herself from… She didn’t know what to call it? The shame? The guilt? But shame about what? Guilt from what? She’d come up with a few feeble theories as to the source of those emotions but all fell to nothing under a bit of scrutiny. 

She ended up pulling out her book, only getting as far as:

_You see, the thing about Artie was…_

Before her mind disconnected from the words. Her mind drifted back to _that_ feeling. Swirling her mind around it without ever dipping into the dark ink. Even if she did dip in she knew she wouldn’t be able to write out any good explanation with it.

“Mornin’.” The Doctor was bubbly as ever even in the morning. She was dressed up in an oversized tee shirt and comfy shorts.

“That’s not what you went to sleep in.” Yaz raised her eyebrow.

“No, it’s not.” The Doctor took a seat across from her at the table.

“So you got dressed up in pajamas?”

“Yeah, wanted to look the part.” She smiled, “I am on vacay after all.”

“So you’re feeling better then?”

The smile faltered if only a little, “A bit, what y’said made sense and helped, it did.”

Yaz returned the smile and reached a hand out to rest on the Doctor’s, “Good.” And then _that_ feeling was back. Bigger than ever. She pulled her hand back and clenched it into a fist.

“So, um, what do y’have planned for today?” Yaz asked.

“There’s this really amazin’ gallery here, it’s got art works from all over the ancient civilizations of the entire Menuka Galaxy. And the ancient Baku’s could do some really neat things with paint.” 

“That sounds fun.”

“Yeah, you’re gonna love it.”

“Oh, um,” Yaz bit her lip as the black ink spilled over the image of her and the Doctor spending time together, “I were thinkin’ I could enjoy some time by the pool, catch some sun, you know?”

“No, totally, that’s okay, I get it.” The Doctor smiled at her.

][

The Doctor couldn’t get over the small aching disappointment that Yaz wouldn’t join her.

She was fully aware that Yaz didn’t feel the same. Didn’t really catch the longing looks, the burning in her gut. How fast her hearts pounded away at her ribcage, a frail barrier compared to the vigor of their slams. She was sure Yaz could probably feel them when they were close enough, when they were wrapped up in each other’s arms. She shouldn’t have let that happen. 

Besides, even if Yaz did feel the same it would be so selfish to indulge in those emotions. Yaz already had a hard enough time as it was with her life separate from the Doctor, to entwine themselves even closer would only hurt her more when it drew to its inevitable conclusion.

So even if she wasn’t a monster, maybe, probably Yaz was right, she still couldn’t indulge in those feelings. It was best that the Doctor found herself walking through the art gallery alone. Isolated in a crowd.

She traced through each row, painting after painting. She had a working knowledge to the point that she didn’t feel it necessary to follow a tour guide. Besides, sulking was much better alone.

She had been there a couple of hours when she finally reached the end of the line. The last painting was marginally smaller than the ones that preceded it.

It was called _‘Hyute re Talus’_ , literally translated to, _‘Smoke of Their Fire’_ but meant something akin to _‘Their Soul’_. 

The painting wasn’t the most beautiful, or masterful, or eye catching and for that it was the most notable. It was humble, sitting here as an afterthought. Some small piece that people felt required to include even though it didn’t draw the largest crowd.

Maybe it wasn’t perfect but the Doctor couldn’t tear her eyes away. All other pieces faded in and out of her view, beautiful and important in their own right but never catching her eye or attention long enough to even know their names. 

But this one?

_‘Hyute re Talus’_

She loved it. She couldn’t look away from it. 

The tiny plaque next to the painting took the Doctor’s attention, she wanted to know everything she could about this work.

_‘‘Hyute re Talus’ has a history fraught with mistakes and peril and danger. The first attempts—the exact number of attempts and their full history remains unknown—at this specific artwork have been lost. There are records of three or even four attempts at this artwork but each incarnation somehow found its way destroyed and permanently with no official or accurate record of them. After that there had been seven more attempts at this work only for each to be recorded before painted over. The artist continued to rework the painting haunted by the image of that which they lost in the originals. This went on until the artist died, living in fear that they never improved in quality from the originals. They never went on to create any other artwork. They died unaware of the beauty and importance of this work, which grew to become a staple of fame from his home country.’_

][

The nightmare stuck and swirled about her like a heavy fog. She’d been awake for an hour already and hadn’t been able to pour out the terror and melancholy that had pooled in her gut from it.

It had been a brutal change from the five days of dreamless sleep at the resort.

In it the Doctor had died seven different times in her dream. Each one more brutal than the last. And Yaz couldn’t help the fact that some part of her subconsciousness was still mourning each and every loss. 

Dreams were like that? No matter how far fetched, they always had a funny way of keeping a tight grip on you. Wrapping you up in whatever strong emotion it pulled from you and painting your day with it. It took so much more effort to wipe the oil from the canvas. Too much effort. And even if you could you’d still be left with this haze.

That’s where Yaz was. In the haze. The Doctor; dead, seven times over. She knew it wasn’t true. She knew that it was just a bad dream. She knew that whatever horrible paint had been made through the night would coat the rest of this day. The Doctor wasn’t dead but some part of her subconsciousness was preparing for it. 

She mourned the dream version of her and yet the Doctor expected her to not mourn her when she actually died? To act like everything she’d ever felt was false? To pretend that the Doctor’s death wasn’t like some part of her had been viciously torn from her?

She hated this.

She let out a sigh before pushing herself up from her spot on her bed. If she was going to be up she may as well do something with her time. She quickly pulled off her clothes and switched into a swimsuit. 

The TARDIS must have had a little sympathy for her because instead of being a five minute walk the swimming pool was two doors down. She looked up and thanked the ceiling, unsure of where else to look to address the TARDIS before opening the door and walking in. 

The Doctor sat on the edge of the pool, staring down into her reflection. She had the same idea, apparently. She hadn’t noticed that Yaz had come into the room. 

Yaz paused and watched as the Doctor sized up her own reflection before turning on her heel. When she opened the door this time the hinges squeaked and the Doctor looked up. 

Yaz continued on her way until, “Yaz, you’re not interrupting.”

Yaz stopped in her place and looked back at the Doctor, her eyes distracted by the swimsuit before flicking up to meet Yaz’s. Her face was tinted pink.

“Y’sure?” 

“O’course.” 

Yaz stepped back into the room and let the door ease shut behind her. She made her way across the deck carefully, slowly, still feeling like she was intruding. 

“Y’okay?” The Doctor asked once Yaz made it to her, “You’ve only been asleep for a couple of hours.”

“Nightmare.” Yaz shrugged.

“Do y’want to talk about it?”

Yaz turned to face her and sighed, “You died. Multiple times over and all I could do were watch. And I know you’re alive.” She reached a hand out for the Doctor’s, as if touch would confirm what she was scared wouldn’t be true, “But some part of me, whatever part of me that was in the dream, is still so—” She shook her head.

“Yaz, I’m here.” The Doctor turned her hand over and entwined their fingers, “Right ‘ere.”

“And what do you expect me to feel when you’re not? Do you expect me to jus’ pretend like you meant nothing to me? You want me to not feel anythin’ when this,” She held up their hands, “Ends? You can’t ask me to do that. You can’t ask me to not mourn, to not react to your, your—” Yaz shook her head, eyes watery now. “I can’t just bury everything that’s happened ‘ere. You are so… important to my life, you have changed me and you are part of my life and I can’t just pretend I don’t feel anything when it ends.” Yaz pulled her hand back and curled it into a fist, “So please don’t ask me to.”

“Yaz,” The Doctor sighed, rubbing away a tear with the pad of her thumb, “I’m not asking you to not mourn me or not feel your emotions. I’m asking that you don’t let them consume you. I’m askin’ that you live on for me not die for me. Live on in my honor, make me proud. A part of me will always be with you, a good chunk, yeah? So even if I’m not ‘ere doesn’t mean that this doesn’t count or that I’m not with you, even in a small way, okay? Don’t ruin the memories by holding onto them and refusing to make more.”

Yaz swallowed thickly and nodded. Part of it made some sense she supposed but she didn’t want to think about it, didn’t want to talk about it. She left her room to forget about it and distract herself so how had she managed to find herself right back here? 

The Doctor offered her a tight-lipped smile.

][

The Doctor sat on the hexagonal steps, elbows on knees, fingers steepled together. She’d been unable to drag her eyes away from the _‘Hyute re Talus’._

Well that and _‘Hyute re Talus’ iv._ The fourth incarnation. She’d had the TARDIS display both paintings side by side. _‘Hyute re Talus’ iv._ was miles away from the finished edition. They weren’t identical. They had some similarities, some good, some bad. It was beautiful, don’t misunderstand, but the brush work was sloppy, the color choices weren’t as strong or as vivid as they could have been. 

At the same time, _‘Hyute re Talus’_ wasn’t perfect either. Some portions of the work were messy, but not purposefully so. The brushwork was better but it wasn’t up to parr with the majority of the other works within that museum. But for precisely that reason, the imperfections, the art had swirled in the Doctor’s mind and hadn’t let her go.

She loved it. Some part of _‘Hyute re Talus’_ imprinted itself upon the canvas of her mind until when she closed her eyes it was all she saw. Until, in some weird way it soothed her. 

It acted like some sort of balm, soothing the burning of a pain she had unfairly carried, something that Yaz had treated and cleaned and taken care of as far as the Doctor would let her. 

Yaz.

_I don’t care what you’ve done because it doesn’t matter, all that matters is who you try to be today and tomorrow._

And something tore through her chest taking her breath away. Tears slipped down her face and she smiled. She smiled. 

She wasn’t sure how long she’d stared at the painting. She didn’t care. Everything soothed. Everything soothed and she couldn’t stop looking. She felt alive. And happy. And... okay.

And she wanted to rename the painting. ‘ _Hyute re Talus’_ was a beautiful name, poetic, even. Almost perfect. But the Doctor knew a better name for the painting. 

_Yaz_.

][

She hadn’t been able to sleep. She sat at some uncomfortable precipice, unsure what to think or to feel. She had felt on the verge of... something? She wasn’t sure what, since their last conversation. The Doctor had made sense, she’d cared so much for Yaz and wanted nothing but the best for her. But, she shook her head and sighed. 

She couldn’t have her best if it wasn’t with the Doctor. What would be the point without her? She could go back to police work, she could go back home, spend time with her family, with Ryan and Graham, but it all felt… Wrong without the Doctor.

So pointless. 

She sighed. Again. And ran a head through her hair, before pushing herself up from the bed. She pressed her toes into the wood and stretched her arms above her head, an ironic yawn falling through barely open lips. 

The walk to the library had been a long one. Maybe the TARDIS was mad at her. Fine. She’d let it happen. She was too tired to get into some disagreement with a box. 

The TARDIS grumbled and Yaz pursed her lips.

The doors to the library swung open before she even touched them. Maybe the TARDIS wanted to apologize for the long trek.

She walked through the doors into the homely, ever-expanding room. A fireplace took up home in the corner, surrounded by three couches and a coffee table which were littered in books and notebooks in some language the TARDIS never felt the need to translate. 

To the left was a maze of shelves upon shelves of books. Yaz liked to get lost in there. Get lost in a world that was so much more calculable and understandable than the real one. 

She had found escape in books ever since she was young. Ever since Izzy Flint had… She shook her head. Just another thing on the list of things she didn’t need to think about. 

She started for one of the passages formed by the bookshelves and made her way down it. And walking and walking.

She let her right fingers trail over the spines of the books, some way to tether her to the world around her. 

But the things she ran from would only be kept at bay for so long. Not long enough. And when those thoughts crept back she could do nothing but stop and reach her hand out to the first book on her right. She grabbed it and leafed through it.

 _Poetic Ramblings_ by Thsmn Plum 

She passed page by page until one specific page marked by something Yaz could have sworn wasn’t there a second ago grabbed her attention.

_Wait for the Tide_

_What’s left after this_

_This disfortune isn’t desolate._

_Your imperfect creation—_

_Lumps,_

_Misshapen,_

_Daring,_

_—Were sculpted by gods,_

_Sculpted by perfect hands._

_Do not disgrace the ruined half_

_By destroying the rest._

_Keep building_

_For you._

_Keep building_

_For me._

_Keep building_

_Because of me._

_I’m not there_

_But what I made—_

_What we made_

_Is._

_Do not disgrace it_

_With a premature loss._

_Do not let it fall_

_Before the tide comes._

Something rasped on the back door of her mind, knocked thoroughly. Picked the lock. And Yaz’s breathing deepened, her eyes glazed over and all she did was slam the book shut and shove it back in place on the shelf. Walk and walk until she was far away from that book. 

She didn’t know why she pushed it away. Or maybe she did but she just was too scared to open that door, to fall over the precipice. Maybe admitting you’re wrong is hard. Maybe changing is hard. Maybe death is hard. Maybe living is hard. Maybe living is scary. Maybe Yaz was letting it scare her. Maybe Yaz was strong. Strong enough. And maybe the Doctor was right.

The Doctor was right.

The Doctor was right. 

][

Her arms were shaking with nerves, excitement, butterflies, something. She felt jittery. So jittery. She prodded quickly about the flooring, the jolt of connection between metal and bone enough to spur her on even more.

The Doctor was right.

She didn’t take the time to stop and change out of her pajamas. To brush her teeth. To comb her hair. To do anything she was supposed to do to get ready for the day. She couldn’t even if she wanted to, her energy, the need to see the Doctor was electrifying.

The Doctor was right. 

She made her way across the TARDIS, feet dancing about with energy against the floor until she crossed through the threshold and into the control room.

She sighed out in relief at the amber columns, the low lighting, the Doctor, everything. She’d made it. The Doctor turned around in her spot at Yaz’s footfalls to meet Yaz’s gaze.

Behind her was some artwork holographically projected by the TARDIS. 

“Hiya, Yaz.” The Doctor smiled and it felt lighter somehow.

“Hey.” Yaz returned the smile before nodding back to the painting, “What’s that?” Yaz continued to walk closer until she was on the same level as the Doctor, nearly an arms length away.

The Doctor cast a quick look over her shoulder before turning back to Yaz, “Somethin’ important.” She smiled again but let it drop. She could tell Yaz was nervous. Energetic. She tapped a button on the console and the hologram shut off. “Are y’okay?”

“You mean so much to me, Doctor, like everything, you mean everything to me. And I don’ want to imagine a world where you aren’t with me anymore but—” She ran a hand through her hair, “Life is hard and scary and it’s so much better with you in it but I don’t want to just run away when you’re not here. I don’t know, I just—” She sighed and bit her lip, unsure of what to say, “Y’said yesterday not to ruin the memories by holding onto them and refusing to make more. And I’m not entirely sure what you meant at least I wasn’t but I get it now.

“You’re so important to me. I can’t change that, I don’t want to change it. But you don’t want me to ruin the relationship because I hang onto it even when it isn’t here. And you’re right. I shouldn’t and I won’t and I don’t want to because, Doctor? I want to live for you.”

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> yall  
> thanks for the Read  
> tell me what you thought  
> part ii still hasn't been started yet, stress do be like that but ill get it out as soon as possible


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